The Seamstress (6 page)

Emília patted her sewing bag. The envelope inside had two wet circles where Emília had spritzed her perfume—jasmine toilet water she’d purchased with a chunk of her savings. This card was the boldest yet, suggesting a meeting outside class. Emília felt a nervous shiver run though her. She held her bag tighter.

Colonel Pereira’s house stood in the distance, beyond the bustle of the market. It was a large white mansion at the top of the hill, behind the church. Red and orange bougainvillea fell over the sides of his fence. Both of the colonel’s capangas stood on either side of his front gate, feet apart, hats tilted, hands resting on their holsters. Beside them, the colonel’s white-haired farmhand tightened the saddles on two mules.

At first, Dona Conceição had offered the sewing lessons to Aunt Sofia. She’d refused, claiming she already knew how to sew. “But I will be the girls’ chaperone,” Aunt Sofia had insisted. It wasn’t safe for young ladies to travel alone. There was no real road into Taquaritinga, just a steep mountain path. The trip to Vertentes took three hours down the mountain and four hours back. Emília spent a sleepless night fretting over Aunt Sofia’s presence in class. Their aunt would not sit quietly; she would interrupt the instructor, telling him how to sew this stitch and that one, embarrassing Emília. Before the classes began, Emília spoke confidentially with Dona Conceição, who convinced Aunt Sofia that her elderly farmhand was a reliable, vigilant man. The old man lived up to his reputation. If it rained during the ride, he stopped the mules and produced umbrellas from his satchel. In Vertentes, he would not allow Emília and Luzia to walk to class—it was unseemly for young women to wander alone—and guided their mules to the classroom’s front door. Emília hated arriving on the back of a mule. She and Luzia rode the animals sidesaddle, like proper ladies, squeezed between the saddle horn that bumped their hips and the mule’s large cargo baskets that chafed their legs. Emília had to constantly adjust the skirt of her dress, which hiked up during the bumpy ride.

Emília wished they could ride to class on the colonel’s horses, two purebred manga-largas whose trots were smooth enough to suit Dona Conceição. Or in an automobile! The colonel stored his motorcar in Vertentes. It was a black Ford with an engine crank in the front grille. The colonel hauled it up to Taquaritinga only once, on an oxcart. When it arrived, Aunt Sofia was wary. She insisted there was an animal or spirit working within the machine. How would a metal contraption move on its own? The colonel insisted on turning the engine crank himself. His Ford was one of five automobiles outside of the capital, and he would not risk his hired men breaking it. He took off his suit coat. Sweat ran into his eyes. It beaded on his gray mustache. The crank rattled around and around until suddenly, from the belly of the car came a sputter, then a growl. The colonel climbed into the driver’s seat. He steered the Ford around the square. Old men, children, even Emília herself ran behind the car, hoping to touch it. The colonel honked the horn. It sounded like a hoarse moan, calling out to Emília above the din of the crowd. She would never forget the sound of it.

5

Women congregated at the door to the sewing class. Emília pressed to the front of the crowd. Luzia pulled her back. Their chaperone had disappeared into Vertentes’ dusty streets, off to run errands for the colonel.

“Let’s skip today,” Luzia said. “Let’s explore. He’ll never notice.”

Emília shook her head. “I won’t miss a lesson.”

“What do you care about the lessons?” Luzia said, releasing her arm. “You only want to see your professor. I can’t believe you’re fond of him.”

Luzia kicked a stone with the toe of her sandal. Her feet were long and thin—thin enough to fit into Dona Conceição’s pumps without squeezing.

“He’s cultured,” Emília said.

“He’s a sissy,” Luzia replied. “And his hands!” She squirmed dramatically. “They’re like the skin of a jia!”

“They’re a gentleman’s hands,” Emília said. “You can marry some brute with sandpaper fingers, but I won’t.”

Luzia pointed to the Singer building. “If he gets fresh with you I’ll poke him with my sewing needle.”

“Do it,” Emília said, her cheeks hot, “and I’ll throw your saints in the outhouse.”

She walked away from her sister and entered the crowd at the classroom door. Emília had always admired Professor Célio’s hands. She did not think they were clammy and cold like a frog’s skin. They weren’t marked with scars or rough from calluses, and she’d often imagined what it would feel like to have those soft things press against her face, her neck. Emília calmed herself and smoothed her dress. It was her best one, copied from a pattern in
Fon Fon.
It had a low waist and tubular skirt meant to fall midcalf, but Aunt Sofia would never have allowed it. Emília cut the skirt to fall at her ankle. She and Luzia each had three dresses: one housedress made of coarse bramante and two outside dresses made of sturdy gingham and cotton. Emília begged Aunt Sofia for a ream of low-grade crepe or linen, but she wouldn’t allow it. When Aunt Sofia was Emília’s age, she and her older sister could never go into town together. One of them had to stay locked in the house with their baby brother because they had only one dress and one set of shoes to split between the two of them. “And that dress was made out of sewing scraps,” Aunt Sofia chuckled, but Emília never thought the story funny.

When the doors opened, Emília walked into the hot classroom and sat in her usual station—machine 16. Luzia sat facing her, at 17. Professor Célio did not greet them. He examined each station thoroughly, ripping away loose threads and straightening chairs. A piece of his hair fell into his eyes. He removed a metal comb from his breast pocket and brushed it back. When he reached Emília’s station, he dusted her Singer and smiled. Emília’s face grew hot. A giggle rose within her and she covered her mouth to stifle it. Beside her, Luzia sighed loudly and riffled through her sewing bag.

Professor Célio knew how to take apart the sewing machines and put them back together. He knew how to read and write, and spoke with a São Paulo accent that bore no resemblance to their Northeastern twang. He did not cut off the ends of words—he let his
o
’s and
s
’s, linger on his tongue, savoring them, before releasing them into the world. During classes, he sat behind his desk and read while the women sewed. He was unfazed by the clatter of the machines. Periodically he walked around and helped the women with their work, teaching them how to adjust the pedals, how to pull sheer linens through the falling needle without ripping them, how to prevent the thread from clumping as it made its way down into the machine’s base. He helped all of the women, especially Luzia, who crossed her arms and slid her chair away from the machine while Professor Célio gave advice.

The room was hot. Emília’s leg grew stiff from pumping the machine’s pedal. Luzia fumbled with the bobbins on the base of her machine. She leaned across the Singer at odd angles, using her Victrola arm to keep her cloth taut and her good one to slowly push it through the needle. Her foot tapped the iron pedal. Her knees bumped against the underside of the sewing table. Emília liked to watch Luzia when she thought no one was looking. She didn’t like to see her sister struggle; she liked the moments when the struggle ceased, when Luzia found a clever way to prop her arm or move her body in order to accomplish her task. Luzia’s face changed when this happened. It softened, revealing a hint of womanliness, a break in her fierce pride. Once, Emília had caught her dancing alone in their room. Luzia had positioned her arms before her, the Victrola arm permanently bent on her imaginary partner’s shoulder, the straight one holding his hand. Her good arm had flopped and her hips had moved so awkwardly that Emília couldn’t help but giggle. Luzia had stopped and stormed from their room. Emília hadn’t laughed out of meanness, but out of joy. She’d always wished for a normal sister—one who liked fine dresses and magazines, makeup and dancing. One who wanted to leave Taquaritinga as much as Emília did. Seeing Luzia dancing awkwardly before the mirror confirmed what Emília had always hoped—that beneath the crooked arm and the serious face, Luzia was a normal girl after all.

Emília stopped pedaling and removed a bundle of cloth from her sewing bag. The perfumed card was neatly tucked into its folds. Professor Célio bent over her shoulder and arranged her new cloth in the machine. They were learning to sew scalloped edges, and the correct placement of the cloth dictated the success of the assignment. Emília began to pedal. Professor Célio helped her guide the cloth back and forth beneath the needle. For a brief moment, their hands met. Emília grasped his cold fingers and slipped him the card. Then Professor Célio stepped away from her machine, coughed, and placed the note in his suit pocket.

Emília’s heart pumped wildly. She slowed her pedaling and pressed her hands against her cheeks to cool them. When she looked up, Luzia was watching her. Her sister’s eyes were fierce. Her mouth was a thin, white line. Emília stared back. She would not look away. She would not cower. Any time she triumphed, any time she snatched a bit of lace as a keepsake from Dona Conceição’s sewing closet, or purchased a bottle of perfume, or wore her heeled shoes, or wrote her correspondence cards, she was met with this look. Ever since they were children, ever since Luzia had fallen from that tree and crippled her arm, she had felt she had the right to pass judgment upon Emília, to ruin her happiness before it even began.

6

It happened on a Sunday, after church.

Each Sunday when they were children, Aunt Sofia woke them before sunrise and pulled their church dresses over their heads. The dresses were coarse cotton ironed with goma starch, which hardened them into a stiff, canvaslike mold. Luzia was only ten but she was already taller than Emília, her dress exposing her skinned knees.

During mass, Padre Otto held firmly to the pulpit with his stubby fingers and delivered his homily. His prayers rose up above the shuffling sounds and sneezes in the congregation. He pronounced his
r
’s roughly, as if he had a coin on the roof of his mouth and was trying to hold it in place with his tongue. There was a painting of Santo Amaro on the church ceiling. It was huge and sooty from candle smoke and Emília liked to stare up at the bald saint; the candle he held glowed so brightly it attracted the angels. When she received the host from Padre Otto, the priest smiled and the skin around his blue eyes crinkled. When she got older, Emília did not like drinking the wine from the chalice, did not like the thought of her lips touching what everyone else’s before her had. Everyone, she believed, should have their own cup. But as a child, she closed her eyes and waited anxiously for Padre Otto to tip the silver cup to her lips. Its edge was cool and slick, and as she tipped her head back Emília felt a buzzing in her ears, a tingling in her fingertips, a warmth rising in her chest and squeezing her heart. She believed she was the only one feeling this, that she was special, somehow. Chosen. The wine was bitter. It dried her tongue and made the wafer stick to the roof of her mouth. Emília liked this, though—it took the bread a long time to dissolve, and she pressed her tongue to it as they left church and walked uphill, to comadre Zefinha’s house.

Josefa da Silva had an affinity for cabidela chicken, and on the last Sunday of each month she skipped church and sliced open her fattest rooster’s neck, mixing its fresh blood with vinegar and onions. Zefinha was their aunt Sofia’s childhood friend. The two women had grown up in Taquaritinga, had performed their First Communions together, and had stayed best friends despite the fact that after they were married, Sofia stayed near town while Zefinha moved to a farm farther up the mountain. Zefinha was plump and kind and every Sunday after church she fried cheese with cornmeal and let Luzia and Emília eat it straight from the pan, scraping out the last bits of cheese with their forks.

After lunch they sat on Zefinha’s porch. To ward away the bloodsucking gnats that flew under their skirts and around their faces, they rubbed a concoction of lemongrass and lard over their legs and arms and faces, making them shine like glass dolls. The two women sat in wooden chairs. Emília lolled in a hammock with Luzia. Her sister swung them impatiently back and forth with the tip of her toe. Emília leaned her chin off the side of the hammock and watched Zefinha’s youngest son straightening the shed near the side of the house. He rolled a worn bit of rope to make a perfect coil. His tan forearms bulged with each turn.

“Can we play?” Luzia asked. Emília sat up.

“Let them go,” Zefinha said. A large mosquito, its back legs long and curled up like whiskers, floated around her gray head.

Their aunt thought a minute. “Stay near the house. Don’t get your dresses dirty. Emília, watch your sister.”

Emília nodded, then chased after Luzia into the grove of banana trees behind Zefinha’s house. Their sandals crunched and sank into the dried palm fronds that littered the ground. The banana palms bobbed in the breeze, which, over time, had ripped their green fronds into ribbonlike slivers. Emília heard a donkey bay.

“Look!” Luzia said. In the distance was a mango tree, its branches heavy with fruit. A sagging wire fence separated Zefinha’s property from her neighbor’s. Luzia crawled under the fence, then held up the rusted wire for Emília. The neighbor’s land was crowded with spindly coffee trees. Luzia pulled leaves from their branches as she ran toward the mango tree.

Emília followed her sister’s example. She grasped a low branch and hoisted herself into the tree. Her sandals slipped on the trunk. Emília held tightly to a nearby branch and scrambled up. The bark scraped her palms. Across from her, Luzia balanced on a high limb. She reached into the boughs above her and ripped down two ripe mangoes. Cradling the fruits in the skirt of her dress, Luzia carefully sat. She produced a small knife from her pocket. It had been a present from their father, who, during one of his strange visits had shown up at Sofia’s house with bloodshot eyes and breath smelling of sugarcane liquor. Emília had paid him little attention. He’d patted his pockets for something to give them and pulled out his penknife. In his days as a beekeeper, he’d used the knife to slice wax and to scrape propolis, so it had a stubby and sharp blade. On its handle he’d carved the image of a bee. Luzia kept the knife, hiding it from her aunt and carrying it always in her dress pocket or school satchel.